Exploration
We've covered the user interface and game mechanics in a little detail in the previous user guides. Now, let's discuss some stuff that you'll run into as you begin your adventure in Norrath. Getting Your Bearings The Map Window is your friend. The EQ2 map system was revised in 2008, and consists of two helpful parts: *'A small mini-map' is always shown on your main screen, which shows you the immediate vicinity. ** You can zoom the mini-map in and out, by pointing at it and scrolling the mouse wheel. *'A larger full-size map window' can be opened by pressing M. This map shows you the zone, or region, that your character is in. Areas that you have explored are in full-color, while unexplored areas are monochrome. ** You can look at a map of any region in the world, not just the one you're currently in. The place names on the map are hotlinks that you can click. You can also find a map by typing its name in the search field. ** Many landmarks are shown on the map, marked with icons. Some landmarks are also listed in a list beside the map. You can click on any of these landmarks to "set a waypoint" to the landmark. If you're in the same zone, then a glowing trail will appear in front of your character, showing you which way to travel to the waypoint. As you read this guide you will see a lot of people talk about a coordinate that a quest giver or an objective can be located at. It is usually displayed as (1000, 14.0, 500). You can find this number in-game by typing "/loc" (without the quotation marks). * To make the first number bigger, travel West * To make the first number smaller, travel East * To make the last number bigger, travel South * To make the last number smaller, travel North If you have only the coordinate where the quest giver or object is located you can type ingame /waypoint 1000, 14, 500 (for example) and a glow trail will lead you to that location and it will show up on the map as an glowing X. Discovering the World Discovery Locations : Main Article: Discovery Locations In your first playing session, you'll probably find a couple of discovery locations in your newbie zone. Nearly every zone in EQ2 has a handful of noteworthy locations for you to discover. You'll earn a significant amount of experience points the first time you travel to each discovery location. After level 10, you'll also earn Alternate Advancement experience from finding new discovery locations. In fact, discovery locations are one of the key methods of getting alternate advancement experience, so don't miss out on them! Finding Treasure :''Main Article: Equipment and Treasure As you kill creatures and complete quests, you'll find items. As a rule, take every item that you find, and sell it if you don't plan to use it. As you find loot on monsters and get item rewards from quests, you'll notice that some items are more noteworthy than others. EQ2 uses simple labels to describe the value of items: Uncommon, Treasured, Legendary, and Fabled. You can use these labels to make quick judgements about the value of an item. Occasionally, your enemy will drop a Treasure Chest when it dies. The best loot is found in chests, rather than directly on the enemy's corpse. Even the lowliest creature has a small chance to drop a chest, but they are more commonly obtained from stronger creatures. Harvesting Nodes : Main Article: Harvesting, Harvestables (All) As you explore the world, you'll find plants and rocks and other objects that are targetable. When you point your mouse at them, your mouse turns into a "hand". These are harvestable nodes, and they can be harvested for raw materials if you have enough skill. You start with enough skill to harvest every node that you'll find in your newbie zone. We encourage you to harvest occasionally to keep your skills current, because sooner or later you'll probably encounter quests that require you to harvest. You can sell raw materials that you collect to make money, or supply them to a crafter to have an item made for you. Or you can use the raw materials to learn a tradeskill yourself. Collectables :Main Article: Collection Quests Collection items are found by collecting shinies (most often gold "?" marks found scattered randomly on the ground in most zones similar to the image to the right). You will also find Tome Collections in some zones, which are indicated by a "!" mark and look like a fluttering page on the ground. In later zones you'll find collectables hidden in various world objects like barrels and crates. You can add the items to your collections by examining them. You can view the state of your collections in the Quest Journal (press 'J' to open it). When you've found all of the items to make up a collection, visit a Collector in your home city to receive a reward of experience and an item. Collectables can also be bought and sold freely on the broker. Maintaining Your Gear :Main Article: Equipment and Treasure Repairs Each time you die, the equipment that you were wearing takes a 10% loss of durability. This has no effect on your character, until the durability of an item reaches zero. Equipment with 0% condition is non-functional. Therefore, it is important to repair your equipment occasionally, after every few times that you die. Repairing gear is easy: just find a Mender NPC, click on them and select "Repair". Mender NPCs are found in the larger quest hubs of most outdoor zones, and in each city. They are usually not found inside dungeons. Upgrading Gear As you gain levels, you should periodically replace your gear to keep it close to your current level. Each piece of equipment has a minimum level that's required to use it. If you never replaced your gear, it would eventually be tinted gray in your inventory. An item that's tinted gray is rated for far below your level, and is probably hindering your performance in combat. You have several options for improving your gear: * Kill monsters to find new gear. You'll generally find the worthwhile gear only in treasure chests, and therefore you'll want to focus on boss monsters that have special names. You'll see these monsters at fairly random times in your early adventures. They'll be harder to kill than their brethren, but you'll usually be rewarded with either a piece of equipment or a spell scroll. * Finish quests to get rewards. Most quests give an item reward when finished. Often, you get to choose a reward from a list of items. You won't always get an item that you can use, but quests generally give higher quality rewards than monsters do. * Buy new gear from other players. This is done by visiting a Broker NPC, which is found inside your home city. This may be the first thing that motivates you to visit your home city. The Broker NPC gives you access to every item that is for sale from other players. You can search for the type of item you want, and ensure that you're buying items that are usable by your character class and level. To pay for new gear, you can sell items on the Broker yourself to raise money. * Add an adornment. If you really like a piece of equipment, and think that you'll keep it for a long time, then you could improve it by adding an adornment. Adornments are bonuses that you attach to a piece of your gear. An adornment might add more stats, or it might add new effects that you didn't have before. For example, adding spikes to your shoulders would cause your enemies to be hurt every time they attack you. Adornments are created by players, so you'll find them for sale on the Broker NPC. Your Home City :Main Article: Cities By level 10, it's a good idea to visit your home city and explore its services. In particular, you may want to buy your first house, and visit the Broker for the first time. You may also have a collection to turn in. Aside from these activities, your city is also a source of quests. You can use the city quests to guide you to interesting parts of the outside world. Here are just a few of the services that you'll find in your home city: * Transportation: most of the cities are transportation hubs, with direct travel provided to the major hub zones. As you pass level 20 and move on to higher level zones, you'll use these transportation hubs more frequently to get to your adventuring locations. * Bank: use the bank to store things that you don't want to sell or destroy, but that you don't need cluttering your inventory bags. All banks in EQ2 are connected, so the items that you place with one banker will be available at another banker elsewhere in the world. You can also share items with other characters on your EQ2 account through your shared bank. * Broker: buy items from other players, and offer your own items for sale. An advanced search options lets you search for items by various criteria, such as within specific price ranges or level ranges. The broker can sell your items on your behalf while you're out adventuring. * Merchants: minor upgrades to spells, armor and equipment are available from merchant NPCs in each city. These spells and equipment are the lowest quality of gear for characters, which you should buy only as a last resort. They pale in comparison to the gear that comes from crafting, questing, and loot (all of which you can buy from other players through the broker). * Tradeskills: if you're interested in taking up a tradeskill, you'll do it here in the city. Crafting stations are scattered around every city, and with them are tradeskill trainers and foremen, who can supply you with materials and crafting quests. * Housing: see the paragraph below for a note about player housing. * Mounts: horses are sold in every city, and you can buy one as soon as you can afford it. A mount lets you travel faster in outdoor zones, and you can even harvest and engage in combat while mounted. * Achievement Counsel: you can respecialize your alternate advancements by visiting an Achievement Counsel NPC within your city. Getting Directions Any guard in any city will give you directions upon request. Just click on the guard, and a window will pop-up in which you can type a destination. If you know of a particular NPC that you need to find, you can type part of their name. If you want a certain type of NPC, you can type part of their title, e.g. "banker" or "wizard trainer". The guard will give you a waypoint on your map (press M to open it) and a glowing trail will lead you there. Your House Every player can "buy" a small home for free by completing a quest in their home city. As part of your introduction to the city, the quest, First Time Buyer, also gives you some furniture to place inside. As you become richer, you can buy larger and more elaborate houses around the city. There are thousands of unique furniture items to be found in EQ2 which you can use to decorate your house. You can open your house for others to visit, and even let them buy things from sales displays. Your house even has a vault in which you can store items (similar to your bank). For more overview about housing, see the Goals Guide. Leaving the Neighborhood :Main Article: Zone Guide When you reach level 20, you are finished with the carefully-guided newbie zones, and it's time to head out farther afield. At this point, you will have several new options to explore in the world. Each time you gain 5-10 levels, more options will open up to you. * Outdoor zones: If you enjoyed the outdoor, quest-oriented adventure that took you through the first 20 levels, then you should focus on the outdoor zones of Norrath at higher levels. Almost all of the "soloable" content in EQ2 is found in the outdoor zones. Most of these outdoor zones are full of quests for you to discover and complete. For an overview of outdoor quest series, see Soloing Timeline. * Dungeons: If you prefer grouping with other players to take on more dangerous challenges, then you'll want to go exploring underground. There are several dungeons available to conquer at every level range, and most of them have the promise of greater rewards than the outdoor areas. Some dungeons are also well-populated with quests. Some dungeons are shared with other groups, while other dungeons will provide your group with a private instance to play through. For an overview, see Zones By Level#Shared Dungeons. The Zone Guide gives you an overview of each outdoor zone of Norrath. For a more detailed list of all zones and their target levels, see Zones By Level. If you want to learn more about traveling from zone to zone, within zones, and mounts you can personally own for travel, see the Travel in Norrath guide. The Golden Path The Golden Path is a set of outdoor zones that have been recently tuned and improved to give you a smooth, satisfying experience of levelling by questing. You can always choose to quest in other zones, of course. The Golden Path is as follows: * Start in New Halas, Kelethin, Neriak, or Gorowyn and proceed to level 20 there * Butcherblock Mountains for levels 20-32 * Steamfont Mountains for levels 32-42 * Lavastorm for levels 42-52 * Sinking Sands for levels 52-57 * Tenebrous Tangle and the rest of the Overrealm for levels 57-67 * Kylong Plains and the rest of Kunark for levels 67-80 * The Sundered Frontier and the rest of Odus for levels 80-90 An overarching quest line, called The Legend of Roger Goldie, guides you through most of these quest areas. The story begins in Butcherblock Mountains at level 20 and guides you through to Kunark. If You Don't Know Where To Go Next Here's a suggestion: Do a City Task quest. City Tasks will always send you to a part of the world that is appropriate for your current level. Most City Tasks can be completed on your own, but sometimes they will direct you into a dungeon instead. If you don't like the suggestion that you received, then delete the City Task from your Quest Journal and request another one. You can also pick up City Tasks from other cities that are aligned with your own. Each five-level-range has a large number of City Tasks to choose from. City Tasks are obtained from certain NPCs in your home city (or in overland travel hubs at higher levels). They look just like any other quest, with a feather icon above the NPC's head. City Tasks are designed to raise your faction with your home city, and to earn your guild experience, but they're also a great way to find new places to go adventuring. For more information about quests and City Tasks in particular, see the Quest System User Guide.